Legal Maze's Murkiest Corners Worry Companies

In-house lawyers at the nation's top companies got a wake-up call in August, when the Securities and Exchange Commission paid a whistleblower nearly $50,000 for information it said helped stop a multimillion-dollar fraud.

The award signaled to many general counsel that the SEC was likely to make aggressive use of a new program aimed at uncovering securities fraud and other corporate wrongdoing. The program, created by the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory overhaul, allows the SEC to pay bounties for tips, and is among the...